Summer pruning in Mirkwood

Do you remember how our
heroes left the path against Gandalf's advice and ended up lost in
Mirkwood? (I'm writing about The Hobbit, of course.) Finally,
they decided that Bilbo would have to climb a tree in hopes of finding
a landmark to steer toward, and our less than intrepid hobbit summoned
his courage and clambered up through the scratchy limbs until "he poked
his head above the roof of leaves" and "saw all round him a sea of
green, ruffled here and there by the breeze."

Well, that's how I felt
on Friday morning when I started summer
pruning our largest peach tree. Luckily for me, the
tree is short enough that the job required no climbing, but the leaves
were so dense that I had to creep underneath and then pop my head up in
little openings. I could almost imagine that I was parched and
starving, perched atop a tree in the canopy of Mirkwood --- maybe
that's why I was so hungry for lunch.

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I'm pretty sure they were still on the path at that point. They were just discouraged because they were almost out of food and water, and wanted to know how much farther they had to go. They wandered off the path afterwards because they saw a fire at night and thought that they could find food and help there.